Qualia Contemporary Art — Attraction in Palo Alto

Qualia Contemporary Art Gallery is a welcoming breath of fresh air in a high tech heavy metropolitan area without much attention given to cultural developments. Ms Daxue Xu, the artistic director of the gallery, and the guest curator Professor Xiaoze Xie from Department of Art and Art History in Stanford have a keen sense for art works that reflect the current socio-political and cultural changes on the global stage with an emphasis on how the East and the West arrive at the same place from different starting points. The artworks selected for exhibitions express the artists' sentiments and thoughts in a lucid and poignant manner that it is hard for the audience not to be touched in some way. Ms Xu lives up to the apt name of the newly founded gallery.

The first exhibition titled "Catastrophic Beauty: Art in the Age of the Anthropocene" curated by Professor Xie takes on an unanticipated angle of discovering beauty in catastrophe. Shang Yang is a leading avant-garde Chinese artist well versed in ink, oil and mixed media. Unlike his contemporaries who took on an idealist or disillusioned or cynical views on modernity in China, Shang Yang takes a less traversed path of bringing awareness to environmental impact of modernity by alluding to ancient ink paintings and socio-political objects. The Decay series exhibited is an extension of his signature Dong QiChang series in which his attenuated criticism towards environmental impact from modern reforms is directed towards the socio-political areana. The beauty lies in his tasteful manner of fusing ancient Chinese ink painting aesthetics and western styles. John Sabraw turned the environmental impact on its head by converting contaminated water into sustainable pigments used in his paintings reminiscent of Chinese ink wash techniques. The East and the West meet at multiple levels.

The following solo exhibition highlighting Cate White and Sean Howe shifts gears to younger artists with contemporary styles. Cate White juxtaposes well known paintings with modern scenes of herself, her friends and family. Her stand on her self image, race and women's rights are vociferously displayed. The imaginative and childlike works of Sean Howe contrast the subtle messages on the impact of modernity on who we are and how we live.

The most recent solo exhibition centers on foreign born American artists Stella Zhang and Yulia Pinkusevich. Stella Zhang was born into a Chinese artistic family, proficiently trained in traditional Chinese ink paintings since a young age. Her mature art works at times are in contemporary Western style; at times coalesce traditional Chinese aesthetics and philosophy with Western modern and postmodern styles. Her Internal Landscape series is a prime example of the latter. From a distance it resembles traditional ink landscape paintings. Close up one detects suggestions of human spine and nervous system with a vivid sense of qi flowing through - the ancient Chinse concept of energy source in all lives - brought about by heightened tension and release. An exemplary traditional Chinese ink landscape painting takes one to the ultimate state of serene transcendence. Stella Zhang's works are a captivating novel take leading one to an alternate transcendent state of aliveness, tension and release. Yulia Pinkusevich, a Ukrainian artist who lived through Cold War, expressed her intrigue of the dispassionate calculations of the impact of nuclear weapons with their calamitous implications in Isorithm series. The rationalization in the rational calculation of the damage by nuclear weapons is erringly tranquil in her works. There is this sense of dissociation watching chaos unfolding from the ruptures in Isorithm series that is perhaps too familiar to those traumatized by catastrophic events. This brings us back to the first exhibition where catastrophe...

It is a very nice art gallery centered right in the middle of downtown Palo Alto. Super easy to find, right next to the Apple Store. The environment in there is very calm and relaxing, which allows you to really appreciate the stunning works they have on display. Definitely recommend, its a great place...

Qualia is truly an art gem in the bay area. They have carefully curated exhibitions, and insightful artist talks. An artist myself, I find the work presented here have very high quality - you can often find famous contemporary Chinese artists work here. Would highly recommend to art lovers in...